Old-fashioned Pavlova brings light finale to summer meal

The magic of meringue

Pavlova, a popular dessert in New Zealand, is composed of meringue, whipped cream and fresh fruit.
(
Matthew Jonas
)

During a recent decluttering jag, I came across a recipe for Pavlova emailed to me in 1995 from my brother-in-law, for whom the recipe was a summer family tradition in his native New Zealand.

I never tried it then.

I lived in Minnesota at the time, and I suspect blustery winter weather pushed me to plug in my slow cooker and shelve making a delicate meringue topped with whipped cream and fresh fruit.

Reading that old email printout brought me back to 2007, when my husband and then toddler son, Carl, visited the Auckland relatives in November and December -- summer months to those living in the island country with seasons upside down to ours.

They treated us to their Pavlova, and it tasted so light and sweet, like nothing Americans typically eat.

As legend goes, a Wellington hotel baker created the dessert after the 1926 visit of Russian prima ballerina, Anna Matveyevna Pavlova (1881-1931). He hoped his edible creation would be as light and airy as she was in her ballet slippers.

When I perused the recipe again, I figured it was time to bring a little New Zealand to our table in Colorado.

However, I first needed to translate a few of the recipe's ingredients.

Caster sugar is highly refined granulated sugar, something you can make by running conventional granulated sugar through a food processor for about five minutes or until it feels less sandy and more powdery. So-called corn flour is what we call corn starch, and vanilla "essence" is vanilla extract.

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Even with the correct ingredients, my first attempt at baking a perfect Pavlova literally fell flat and soon got a soggy bottom, probably because I spread it like a rectangular pizza crust on a cookie sheet and sprayed the parchment paper lightly with vegetable oil.

Obviously, I needed to read between the lines of this recipe. To get it just right, I placed a long-distance call to my sister for some advice. She had celebrated her 40th birthday in April around a Pavlova in a restaurant, but admitted that she never got the hang of how to make it at home.

So, she passed me along to her mother-in-law, Jeannie Wolfenden.

Wolfenden usually buys the dessert, which sells for about $19 in New Zealand, because it is fast and fail-safe.

"I've had Pavlova recipe failures that end up like a board about a half-inch thick that no amount of whipped cream can save," she said via e-mail. Still, from-scratch tastes a bit better, which explains why her maternal grandmother, the late Amy Hutchinson, made Pavlova for the family lunch on Christmas day for years.

Wolfenden believes her grandmother used the traditional recipe from The Edmonds Cookery Book, which spells out more of what I needed to know: Do pile high the unbaked Pavlova in a 10-inch diameter pan, lined with parchment paper, rather than spreading it on a cookie sheet. Use water droplets rather than vegetable to hold the parchment paper to the pan, and do slowly add the caster sugar to the stiff egg whites and beat that mixture for 10 minutes. Do not stop until you cannot feel grit when you rub some between your thumb and index finger.

Also, I learned to bake the Pavlova and then turn off the oven and leave it in there overnight to dry out the crust, which can crumble when topped with whipped cream.

If the Pavlova arrives at the table in one piece, Wolfenden recommends cutting it into eight slices and serving like a pie.

"(That is), as long as you don't have a Pavlova addict who could eat half by themselves!" she wrote.

Directions: Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form. Add sugar a heaped tablespoon at a time and beat well after each addition. Then beat for at least 10 minutes. This is very important. Then sprinkle vinegar, corn flour and vanilla essence into mixture. Beat until blended.

Coat baking paper with water drops to allow baking paper to stick to sides of tin, and pile Pavlova mixture in a 10-inch diameter pan.

Heat oven to 300 degrees. Put Pavlova in oven, then immediately turn oven down to 250 degrees and bake for 1 hour. Turn oven off and leave the dessert in the oven until the oven is cold -- usually overnight. This makes a nice crust on outside.

Before serving, cover the Pavlova in whipped cream and decorate with sliced kiwis, strawberries, blueberries, passion fruit or other favorite fruit.

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